This blog explores a family history search. It addresses genealogy, Jewish heritage travel and artwork. It has taken the author to Belarus, the Ukraine and Poland where she visited her ancestral towns as well as Lithuania where she studied Yiddish at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute. As the author is both an artist and a genealogist, the blog also addresses her artwork related to her family and cultural history.

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Sunday, April 15, 2012

Evolution of a Painting

I often make changes to paintings after they have been considered finished for some time. I’ve learned that “finished” is a relative term. That’s why I always struggle to answer the question about how long it takes me to do a painting. The initial painting can sometimes develop quite quickly, but the incremental changes happen gradually after I live with the work for some time. When I review the series of photos that I take throughout the process, I am always surprised at how much a painting changes over time.

The first painting that I did in the Jewish Identity and Legacy series was titled Sleeping with the Chickens and told the story of a woman who remembered sleeping at her grandmother’s with a box of two live chickens by the bed. They terrified her at night and became dinner the following evening. I was never quite satisfied with it and decided to change it in two ways. The original painting is above.

The woman had told me of how she was terrified of the chickens and I thought about what that felt like physically. I realized that when we recoil in fear, our eyebrows rise and our mouth opens so I sought to get that effect in the painting.

I also had never liked the distinct lines that seemed to segment the painting into separate spheres. I often use my Ipad to enlarge and crop an image visually. When I did this, I found that I focused on the connection between the woman’s gaze and that of the chicken’s. I wanted to think about how I could emphasize that while minimizing the lines that were less relevant to the story. I took a wash of white paint and extended the covers, letting the box show through. The line of the blanket echoed the line between their gaze. The blanket still was too large of an expanse and needed to be broken in some way. She had spoken to me of the big feather bed, no doubt filled by the feathers of these chickens' predecessors so I decided to extend the idea of feathers flying. The addition of several feathers in this space echoed those above and balanced the image. I also extended the feathers of the chicken to make it feel more menacing. The effect of these changes is to further the telling of the underlying story.

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Welcome

Welcome to this blog. In these pages I address the issues that are of deep interest to me. I take you on my travels to Eastern Europe, my observations about the former and present Jewish communities in those countries and the response of those countries to their history. I capture this in both words and artwork and frequently share my artwork in these pages. In addition I address my genealogy research based on family who originated in many of the places I explore. This has been a process of discovery for me and I invite you to join me on this journey.

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About Me

Susan Weinberg researches, paints and writes about family, cultural and community history. Her family history interests and travel frequently inform her artwork.
Susan writes of her travel to ancestral towns throughout Eastern Europe and her artwork based on those communities.
Susan has exhibited her artwork nationally and internationally. Her most recent body of work is the Jewish Identity and Legacy project, a project which includes oral history and art creation. Based in Minneapolis-St Paul, Susan creates artwork and does genealogy consulting. She speaks frequently on her artwork and genealogy topics. She maintains two blogs, Layers of the Onion with a family history and art focus and Creative Connections on the Minneapolis Jewish Artists' Lab.